Nintendo Wins $12.2 Million in Lawsuit Against ROM Site Owners

Nintendo won over $12 million in a judgement against the owners of two ROM websites, TorrentFreak reports.

The video game company filed a complaint against LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co in July, stating the websites were “built almost entirely on the brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo’s intellectual property rights.”

“The LoveROMs and LoveRETRO websites are among the most open and notorious online hubs for pirated video games,” the complaint said. “Through the websites, the defendants reproduce, distribute, publicly perform and display a staggering number of unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s video games, all without Nintendo’s permission. This includes thousands of games developed for nearly every video game system Nintendo has ever produced.”

The sites are reportedly operated by a married Arizona couple who swiftly took the sites offline after the complaint was filed. Faced with a lengthy legal battle, they admitted to both direct and indirect copyright and trademark infringement and agreed to the judgement of $12,230,000. But, as TorrentFreak points out, they likely don’t have that kind of money and won’t have to pay the full amount. It’s likely Nintendo will agree to a smaller settlement in private, while sending other ROM sites a warning.

And that warning appears to be working. Several other ROM sites have reportedly shut down since July. EmuParadise, one of the largest retro emulator and ROM sites on the internet, announced in August it was doing away with its library of games and instead focusing on its emulator database and its community.

“It’s not worth it for us to risk potentially disastrous consequences,” it said.